


Stealin'

by killerjoe1995



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Thieves, Day 4, First Meetings, Joger Week 2019, M/M, Prompt: Jewellery, Robbery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 05:13:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21069431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killerjoe1995/pseuds/killerjoe1995
Summary: The guy turned back and fixed Roger with a stern glare.“40/60 or no deal” he pronounced with an air of finality. Roger frowned.“Then no deal. Sit back and be my guest” the blond answered flippantly, facing the case again. Time to use his brain for something more than petty mathematics. The guy huffed.“I'll sit back all right, enjoying the view of you totally missing the opening point” he remarked wryly, and Roger bristled.*Everything's going Roger's way, until it's not. The man standing just outside the safety vault is not helping, until he is. After all, nobody said that the life of a thief is always puppy dogs and rainbows.





	Stealin'

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everybody! This is JOGER WEEK!!!  
I'm so glad for all the stories that I get to read, I'm so happy I can't say with words! John and Roger are one of my favourite pairing ever, so yeah, I'm pretty excited :)
> 
> This is my contribution for the week :) I choose the prompt jewellery, even if... reinterpretated. 
> 
> I'm not a native english speaker, nor I'm betaed, so if you spot something horrific... feel free to point it out.

Roger lowered himself thorough the ceiling, his waist secured by a strong rope with steel interior. He managed to take aim just right and shot a precise bullet to the   
supposedly hidden camera. The thing shut down with a pitiful sound and the blond smirked. 

“All smooth, Fred. I'm in” he whispered into the headset in his ear.   
“Wonderful, darling. Mind the laser beams” came his accomplice delighted voice. Roger twisted mid-air, looking for the lasers control unit.   
“Fred, where's the unit?” he asked, praying that his contact lenses would stay in place this time. During their last robbery he managed, who knows how, to lose one, and it had been a nightmare.   
“Should be in the ceiling, dear. Find it”. Roger felt his annoyance growing.   
“You are supposed to find it! I have to shoot it!” he reminded his fellow thief with a barely contained growl. Freddie had the courage to tut, the rotter.   
“Impatient little thing, you are. Here, got it, just over the door on the left”. Roger elected to ignore the comment about his apparently unjustified hurry, it wasn't like he was suspended on the ceiling of a fucking safety vault after all, and squinted to find his target. Then he pointed his gun and shut it down too. He smiled, satisfied, and let himself drop to the floor. 

“Done. I'm inside and ready to take our prize” he commented, raising to a standing position. Freddie chuckled, while complimenting himself and his partner in crime, and Roger looked at the jewel in the middle of the room, revealed in the moment the lasers disappeared. A beautiful necklace, with a pendant composed by an enormous diamond 50 carat which had an approximate value of 6 million pound. That was their highest heist, and it would have allowed them to retire for good. It was mesmerising, alluring him near with his brightness and reflecting the neon light of the room from behind a bulletproof glass case. That shouldn't have been there. Roger's jaw dropped slightly.   
“Fred...”  
“I was thinking to leave for the Pacific, what do you think darling?”   
“Hum... Freddie”   
“We could even buy an island, all for ourself! You'd like that, Blondie?”   
“Freddie!”   
“What?” Freddie answered back, finally redirecting his attention from daydreaming to the matter at hand. That was definitely more concerning than planning how to spend the diamond that they didn't have stolen yet, and that Roger wasn't so sure they would be able to steal any more.   
“There's a case! Why there's a fucking case?”. He was getting nervous, and that wasn't good. He heard Freddie's sharp intake of breath.   
“There's what?”. Freddie was totally panicking, and that was even worse. Roger needed his partner's wits all focused right now. He took a deep breath.   
“Okay, calm down. Look at the recordings, what did us miss?” he tried to reason. They had planned the entire thing for months, and didn't find a clue about another protection for the diamond. They had made researches, studied the entire place and Freddie had even gotten inside the building to have a better look, acting like he was an interested consumer as rich as the fucking Queen of England. And never, ever, a word about this fucking case. Which, seen up close, seemed pretty technological to him.   
“Nothing! There's absolutely nothing about that case, darling” came the dejected voice from the headset. Well, Roger wasn't going to walk out without the diamond. He had already climbed twenty floors from outside the building, another ten from inside the fucking elevator shaft which was going to give him nightmares for a long time, then managed to reach the office above the safety vault and proceeded to enter it from the ceiling. He deserved that diamond, goddammit!   
“I'll take a better look” he whispered to Freddie, who was by the sound of it at the verge of tears. He reached with an hand for the side of the case when a voice stopped him in his track. 

“Don't touch it!”   
Roger whipped around with the speed of light, his hand already raised to point the gun – the fucking gun good only for shutting down techno systems, not men, damn him he should have taken his Glock with him fucking hell – toward the intruder. If there was a guard too, together with the case, he was going to cry.   
The man was, for one, outside the vault. Which was good. He was dressed in all black, like Roger, and at seeing the gun only raised his eyebrow, instead than his hands like every sane person would have done in the same position. Roger's blue eyes scanned the stranger, and he noticed that the guy had his same gun attached at the belt. Roger raised his head and their eyes met. Another thief.   
Bloody ridiculous.  
“I have company” Roger informed Freddie. His dark haired friend gasped.   
“Police? I'm so sorry darling, happy to have met you but...”   
“No need to run, idiot. There's another guest interested in the diamond” Roger elaborated, rolling his eyes at Freddie's melodramatic tendencies. His friend sighed in relief.   
“Oh, well then. Just take it first, lovvie”.   
Roger looked at his fellow thief, locked out of the vault, and then at the diamond, safely secured inside his case. Easier said than done. 

“There's another thief here. No, I don't know how but he's inside. Fuck off, Brian, I have no idea”. Roger glanced sideways at the guy, the thief too speaking to his accomplice, and smiled at that. Freddie and him had studied for a long time how to overcome the obstacle of the last iron gate just inside the safety vault door. At the end the only solution was for Roger to turn into a Cirque du Soleil acrobat, but it was worth it, he managed to get inside just right. All turned out perfectly, save for the fucking case.   
Speaking of which, Roger had to understand how it worked. He didn't have all night to take out his well deserved diamond. 

“Stop it, you idiot! I already told you to not touch it!” the other thief whispered-yelled, and Roger rolled his eyes.   
“Or what?” he asked, eyes focused on how to destroy the thing without damaging the jewel. If he hadn't been smart enough, or reckless enough, to get inside first, it was his lost and Roger's gain, really.   
“Or you're going to alert all Scotland Yard, the entire Westminster and the fucking Queen at once. Not to forget, you'll blow our eardrums out” the guy answered dryly.   
Uh, that actually made sense. Roger straightened up, he wasn't keen of alerting anyone about his presence there. Or blowing his brain out. He looked back at the other thief. He was tall and lean, with short brown hair and grey-green eyes. The guy just stared at him, and Roger sighed.   
“What now?” he asked, half to himself, half to everyone willing to find him a solution. The man raised an eyebrow.   
“I know how to open the case” he claimed, crossing his arms on his chest. Roger mirrored the position.   
“Really. I suppose you aren't keen on sharing your knowledge, are you?” he answered, expression showing all his disbelief. The man smirked.   
“I might. For the right price, of course”. 

Of course. That would mean sharing the diamond's earnings with two strangers. Roger wasn't so sure he wanted to, honestly, he and Freddie had worked their fingers to the bones for this heist. Alas, he didn't have that much of a choice. Still...   
“Okay. 70 percent for us, 30 for you” Roger offered, still staring his rival down. The man snorted.   
“I was thinking about a fifty-fifty, actually. It's only fair, giving that you don't have a clue about how the case works” he remarked and really, the sassy tone was annoying Roger to no end. The blond huffed.   
“Maybe, but I'm not the one who isn't even near the aforementioned case, am I?” he sassed back. Two could play this game. The man chuckled.   
“I meant to ask, actually. How the hell did you managed that?” he asked, and he seemed sincere. Roger shrugged.   
“From the ceiling. Now, you accept my deal or not?” he replied, avoiding to tell the thief all the clues on how gain the entrance to the office above. He saw the puzzled expression of the guy when trying to figure out how to reach his same position, and then the resigned look of someone who had gave up. He smiled at the man, who scowled.   
“Wait just a second” the other thief said, turning a bit to speak to his partner. Roger snorted.   
“My pleasure. It's not like we have tight deadlines” he mocked, but did took a step behind to give the man more privacy. He received a dark look for his last statement but well, he would live.

“What do you mean with 'find a better deal'? I'm not selling myself short here, Brian... I can't reach it! I'm thirty second from shut you out, be aware” the guy muttered in his microphone, and Roger smirked to himself. He often had the same instinct to shut out Freddie's annoying opinions when he was on the field. He could relate.   
The guy turned back and fixed Roger with a stern glare.   
“40/60 or no deal” he pronounced with an air of finality. Roger frowned.  
“Then no deal. Sit back and be my guest” the blond answered flippantly, facing the case again. Time to use his brain for something more than petty mathematics. The guy huffed.   
“I'll sit back all right, enjoying the view of you totally missing the opening point” he remarked wryly, and Roger bristled. He wasn't a novice with no experience, thank you very much. He could open the case, even only to show the other thief he was capable of, his competitive streak was as known as his lack of patience, after all. Roger took a calming breath and looked at the case, drinking in the sight of every angle of it. There must be at least a slight difference that could clue him in.   
“Getting lost already?”   
To say that the commentary didn't help was the understatement of the fucking century.   
“Thank you, that's not at all distracting” Roger grumbled, still giving his back at the man. There was nothing on that case that could help him, everything totally specular with the other side. Also, all those indents in the basis was making him slightly nervous, he had never seen them before. The guy snorted.   
“Just accept the deal and we'll be able to leave this fucking place with 6 million pounds in our pocket” the other thief suggested. Roger grunted.   
“I'll leave this place all right with the fucking diamond in my pocket, you just see” he said smugly, he would open it. He had just leaned toward the case when a blasting sound echoed in what Roger thought were the entire premises. He jumped, startled, and looked up.   
“I fucking told you so! What the hell did you do?” the other thief was staring at him wide eyed, a strange mix between anger and dread in those grey-green irises.   
“I did fuck shit! I didn't even touch it!” Roger defended himself, the horrible feeling of defeat crawling up his limbs. That wasn't fair. After all they had done for that gem...   
“Roger, darling, what the hell did you do?” came Freddie's voice, and Roger saw red.   
“Absolutely NOTHING! Not everything is always my fault, you know?” he screamed, the hell with being cautious. Scotland Yard was probably already outside the building by now. He eyed the case warily.   
“What to you mean 'another thief'? Brian, fuck, I can't see the cameras like you, you'll have to use words!” the other man too had let his emotions loose, and was talking with his partner in harsh tones. Roger caught upon what the two were saying just when Freddie advised him of the same circumstances.  
“I hate to tell you this, but there's a third thief. Less good than us, though, because he has the alarm activated at the fifth floor”. Roger didn't have in him to be angry any more, really. He was just stunned because in three the same night? Was this a kind of bloody exclusive party now? The other guy looked at him behind the gate. 

“Can you exit that vault?” he asked, and seemed suspiciously concerned about Roger's well-being. Kind of cute, in a way. Roger shrugged.   
“I'll manage. But first...” he took a step back, raised his leg backwards and kicked the case with all the force he could muster. The thing fell back with a satisfying crash and another, louder, alarm exploded inside the safety vault. The other thief was stunned to silence for a beat.   
“Are you totally crazy or something? Why the hell have you done it?” he screamed, barely audible over the blasting sound. Roger shook his head without answering and proceeded to kick again the damn thing against the walls, dead determination in his eyes.   
“C'mon, you fucking piece of shit, break” he cursed under his breath, beating the case tirelessly and hoping against hope that the diamond would be undamaged by his outburst. He finally could see a crack on the glass, and was able to enlarge it enough to fish the necklace out. He had to crash his techno gun against it till the poor thing was damaged beyond repair but well, it was worth it. He straightened up, holding his prize up with pride.   
“Aha! I told you so” he exclaimed to no one in particular. The expression of the other thief was one of total disbelief.   
“You are out of your god-damn mind” he muttered, still looking at Roger like he was some kind of strange species. The blond put his new acquired necklace in his secured pocket, satisfied. Then he took hold of the rope with which he entered the vault and secured it again on his waist, ready to climb back from where he had come. He turned to the other, still flabbergasted, thief with a blinding smile.  
“It was a pleasure spending those unforgettable moments with you. Stay safe and have a good night” he saluted, without malice. He was too overjoyed to be spiteful. The other thief rolled his eyes.   
“We'll probably meet again in no time at the first police district but yeah, you too” he commented dryly, and Roger frowned. Well, what a mood breaker. Also, pretty accurate foreseeing, if Roger didn't get a move on exiting the place. Without a word, Roger began climbing the rope, while the other thief exited the vault, disappearing from Roger's sight. 

*

“Darling, took the left alley. The LEFT!”   
Roger made a sharp turn, just to find out other policemen already climbing the stairs. He rounded the corner and entered the first door he found, closing it with a loud bang. He found himself in what probably was a conference room and took advantage of the various chair on display, taking one and placing it under the doorknob. It wasn't perfect, but would have to do for now. Pew, he was at his wits end. He has managed to reach the penultimate floor, but had no idea on how to escape from there. He touched the diamond in his pocket, with a strange sort of forlornness. Only less than twenty minutes, and already he had become attached. What a predicament.   
“Now what? You have ideas, Fred?” he asked, without much hope. Sadly there wasn't much that his partner could do for him. He heard Freddie sigh over the com.   
“Well, we have an escape route from the roof, but I can't guide you there. There's guards all over the place” Freddie said with remorse. Roger nodded, he knew that. He absent-mindedly sent a though at his fellow thief, who knows if he had managed to run away or if the police had caught him already. Maybe he was right before, and they were going to share a security cell very soon. 

Loud bangs at the door startled him from his haziness, the clear voices of screamed orders making him nervous. Here it was the chivalry, then. Another soft thud just beside him made him jump out of his skin, and Roger whirled around, heart thumping in his chest.   
“Hello there, fellow thief. Need a way out?”   
Was Roger's time to look flabbergasted, in seeing the brown haired thief from the vault pop up from the ventilation duct, a smirk in his face.   
“What the hell...” Roger murmured, shocked. Another bang at the door got him on with the program, and Roger sense of preservation kicked. It wasn't time for questions, not now.   
“Make space” he muttered, the other thief reaching out with his hand to help him climb the wall. In no time the two where safely inside the duct, slowly crawling their way to freedom.   
“You have a way to get down the roof?”   
Roger thought it was just polite to at least ask, giving that the other man had practically saved his ass just a minute ago. The other thief nodded.   
“Yeah, Brian took care of that. Do you?” he asked back, and Roger hummed.   
“Yeah, Freddie's on it” he replied. When they exited the duct and could breath the fresh air of the night, Roger could finally relax. They were out, they were still free, they were... well, he was rich. Huh. 

Roger chanced a sideways glance to his companion, who too was breathing the freedom, and felt uncharacteristically sheepish. Never before in his life he had been guilty at enjoying the profits of his robberies. Maybe because never before he had needed help from anyone save for Freddie. And now he owed his freedom to another thief. For his biggest heist ever. Just his shitty luck, really.   
“Roger darling, get down from there would you?” Freddie prompted, and Roger can understand him, really. He wasn't the main character, of course he wasn't that involved in Roger's miraculous escaping. The blond swallowed his remorse, he was a thief after all. Stealing was his job, not charity.   
Roger made to walk to his safety point, but an hand on his wrist stopped him. It was a firm grasp, but not hurting nor threatening. He glanced at the other thief.   
“I saved your ass. Don't I deserve an award?” the guy asked with a sly smirk, that made the blond thief bristle. It wasn't that Roger didn't agree, because he did, but still the man's arrogance irked him.   
“No one asked you to, actually. However, you're right, I should thank you” Roger answered, while smoothly trying to free his hand. The other man didn't let go, but huffed a laugh.   
“I take your thanks, and something more” he remarked, taking a step near Roger. The blond stiffened, ready for a fight.   
“I don't want the diamond, don't worry” the man, reading Roger's thoughts, made clear immediately, “and not even a percentage of the profits... shut up, Brian. I want a name, and a date. Let's say... tomorrow at 9 pm, I'll pick you up at Piccadilly Circus. Dress elegant”.   
Roger, wide eyed, couldn't believe what he just heard. The man looked at him from head to toe, seemingly satisfied with himself. Roger stopped a moment to really studying him, and he couldn't say he wasn't enchanting. He could even say hot. The blond smirked.   
“Name's Roger Taylor. I accept your offer”. The guy smirked back.   
“John Deacon. And it wasn't an offer, beautiful”. 

Roger gained a diamond from that night. And a boyfriend, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone who read till the end. Comments and kudos are the delight of this author :)


End file.
